Dancin' in the street

Yesterday was our block party. Great timing for us--we got to meet lots of neighbors and see just how many kids live in our new neighborhood. A couple of times, they kicked the big kids out of the bouncy-house so Rachel and some other little ones could go in. Once, when it was just Rachel, Daddy got in with her and helped her bounce around a bit. They had a good time. Rachel also won a bobbing-for-apples race! (Somewhat unclear on the concept, she stuck her hand in and grabbed an apple. Amazing that she beat all the kids with their faces in the water, trying to use their teeth!)

Perhaps the most fun, though, was dinnertime. There was a giant potluck, with long tables set up in the street. (It's interesting how puny long tables look when they're set up down the middle of even a small street!) And there was a band, which set up right in front of our house! It was two guys--one on guitar, and one on drums--and Rachel was very impressed. She couldn't take her eyes off them. She also did a little dancing, which was adorable (says her mother). She couldn't go all-out with the dancing, though, because that might have required taking her eyes off the band. (It's also possible that she was watching so carefully in order to mimic the movements of the guitarist, who was walking and bopping around a bit in front of the drum kit. Her dance steps look like that might have been her inspiration, but I was watching her, not the band, so I can't be sure.) They were still playing when we came inside, so Rachel got to take her bath accompanied by the sweet strains of the block party music. Very cool stuff.

She communicates too well!

Rachel is such a great communicator--today when we were having our ice cream treat in the backyard after dinner, shelooked around and said, "You both have green bowls." (Hers was purple.) Did I mention that she forms sophisticated sentences? Geez! Such a great communicator that she's perhaps shooting herself in the foot in some ways. (Or maybe she's shooting me in the foot. I'm not quite sure how to carry that metaphor through.) Anyway, she's such a great communicator that it's easy to forget that she's only one and not eleven. She's not quite developmentally able to (1) pay attention to what I'm saying (in the midst of doing something really exciting like sorting through pebbles looking for a red one), (2) tear herself away from what she's doing (pebbles are awesome, after all!), (3) decide to follow my instruction, and then (4) do so. I mean, I'm sure in a couple of months when she's two, all of this will come naturally, but right now she's still only one. Still, because she talks so well and understands us so well (when there are no distracting pebbles at hand), it's hard to remember that talking and understanding are different skills than attending and following directions. Are you guessing that we've had some frustrating days? Yesterday at the beach (which was super-duper fun--thanks to all the friends and pals who joined us!) she wanted to stop and sort pebbles on the path when I wanted to walk toward the beach, and once I'd sat down in the sand (so much less cool than pebbles, apparently) she decided she needed to walk away from me at a rapid pace. And this mother is getting rather large and rather tired. Okay, yes, and rather cranky. But I'm sure that once she's two...

We're home!

I always felt funny talking to people about this, our yeddow house (pronunciation has evolved from yeyyow), before we moved in. I was afraid of jinxing yet another deal. Sometimes I still don't feel like we really live here, but the signed contract and the change of address stickers and the parade of repairmen and the mountain of boxes conspire to make it more real. We live in the yeddow house! And Rachel loves it. She loves the straight stairs, she loves the backyard, she loves the nearby park, she loves walking with Daddy to the train in the morning. It is good that we are here.

We're slowly plowing through the mountains of boxes. This morning we found a number of hats

and aprons.

We're running out of places to put things, so we just have to put on anything that's wearable. Maybe we should have waited to move until winter--this could get a bit warm!

We also declared several boxes "henhouses," as Rachel and Daddy had read this morning The Sly Fox and the Little Red Hen. Rachel is getting good at imagining things--she told me her henhouse was red and had a little blue door, just like in the book. Here's her little red henhouse with its little blue door. Isn't she a cute little red hen?


Rachel's speech has really taken off lately. She's added mimicry to her repertoire--she mimics us whenever we make a nonverbal sound. My grunts while pulling weeds, David's "Baah!" to scare a squirrel, and every noise produced by every tool wielded by the plumber who sawed, drilled, plugged, joined, and vented in and around our pipes this morning. And of course she thinks she is quite hilarious every time she makes one of these sounds. Perhaps there is a career in Wall-E-type voiceovers in her future. Even cooler, though, is her ability to form sentences. Really sophisticated ones. (A skill she did not learn from her mother, judging by that lovely fragment.) "Nana wear red jacket." "Daddy come home for dinner." "Libby go in henhouse wi' Rachel." It's really fun to be able to communicate with her--more fun all the time, as she gets better and better at it.